Homeric Greece

The earliest literary record of classical Greece, the Iliad of Homer, provided the ancient doctor with both a paradigm of his success and a premonition of his failure. Among the Greek heroes who fought in the Trojan war were Podalirius and Machaon, the physician sons of Asclepius and Epione, who not only gave medical assistance but also took their places in the battle line. When Machaon was wounded by Paris' arrow in his right shoulder, Idomeneus ordered Nestor to remove him to safety in his chariot, for

This quotation became a favourite among the Greeks, and its praise of the physician was further strengthened by the frequent omission of the qualification in the second line. It confirmed the doctor's own self-image as a man somehow raised above the majority by his skills, and could be supplemented by another passage from Homer's Odyssey which placed him among those whose fame could spread throughout the world.

At the same time, although these healers might be on hand to treat wounds, they were by no means always successful. The great plague that afflicted the Greek army before Troy was not stayed by human power but by the divine intervention of Apollo, whose anger at the insult done to his priest had caused him to shoot his deadly arrows at the Greeks, ‘ so that the funeral pyres burnt incessantly ’.